I love Pinterest. I really do. I’m on there drooling over every amazing DIY pin and tons of other items that appeal to everything that I like.

I have to take issue with something though. Pinterest is being seen as a platform that allows us to be privvy to people’s genuine likes and interests, a window into their inner-most working… something that might be considered a holy grail if we want to get all exaggerative and big-picturesue…  and I really beg to differ. Not because it doesn’t have the potential to be that, but because I think we’re all barking up the wrong tree in terms of what Pinterest is actually giving us and what people are capable of sharing.

There was a post that I read the other day on Search Engine Land talking about entity search being controlled by social. In there was an interesting piece about what Pinterest shares with marketers and brands over other social networks. I agree with the majority of what was said there, but I also have to disagree on the basic premise of why Pinterest is being stated as one who provides a decent look into personas in the the market. Pinterest has been rolling around in my head for a while now, so I’m curious to get your thoughts on how you feel about the below.

How true are these personas that marketers and brands are planning on taking into consideration as a potential demographic? Is Pinterest creating a generation of lying consumers who share “interests” that are completely disconnected from their offline interests because it’s easy to “pin it and forget it?”

Or is Pinterest creating all new interests that are actually translating into offline activities?

There are many types of ways that Pinterest users choose to portray themselves, and the boards and pins they follow and share are a direct result of that. Let’s take a peek at some different ways that Pinterest users are utilizing the platform, which is very different from how they utilize platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Users essentially share boards and pins that:

• Represent who they are- This is generally a fairly accurate representation of that user’s likes and interests. There’s a high correlation of who their boards and pins suggest they are as compared to real life.
• Represent who they want others to think they are- These are pinners who sculpt their online identities (as they would any other network) to present a certain persona for how they want to be perceived.
• Represent who they think others think they are- Pinners who want to share minor interests of theirs that their friends and connections also show an interest in. They sculpt their identities to cater to the needs of their network.
• Share realistic wants and needs- For example, pinners who are engaged and creating wedding boards, ones who are new home owners that are sharing and constructing DIY pins to reference in their adventures. Pinners who are creating realistic boards that could potentially become purchases and projects.
• Share unrealistic wants and needs- For example (and there are tons of users that do this) singles creating wedding boards, users with no intention of purchasing a home creating boards for DIY projects they find interesting, etc.
• Represent motivation and that extra push- Pinners who create boards and share pins with motivational quotes during tough times, motivational quotes about working out; pins that solidify what they’re aiming for and create a venue for accountability. Meaning, once you’re pinning it, you’ll start to believe that you need to “practice what you preach.”

All of these are great. The question is, how do we distinguish what kind of online profile someone is creating when we’re gaining access to users we can’t otherwise engage with on other networks?

The trickiest part of marketing is factoring in human inconsistencies and free will . No matter how good we are at marketing, there’s always one essential piece missing to the picture that we’ll never be able to replace. We underestimate people’s natural tendencies to embellish, be curious, share things that only require a click and have a low propensity for change.

So how accurate can we be if we’re supplementing information about our target markets from Pinterest? If I’m a brand that created a wedding board, and start gaining followers to it, am I going to be able to cross reference those that are single with those that are engaged with their likes across other networks?

And with that, can we draw a strong psychographic profile of that person based on trusting the remaining boards and pins in their profiles? When you’re relying on a lie (the wedding board when that person isn’t even dating someone) can you trust the remainder of the market information you’re grabbing as a result?

We need to think more carefully before we start tying interests to a specific user when Pinterest is creating more of a “scheming” vs. “doing” environment- meaning, it’s so easy to create these interests and like certain trends, but are we more likely to “do” any of these things? Or is the producer part of us losing out to the passive consumer part of us? How many people are spending hours pinning, and taking away from actually doing?

Is Pinterest creating a new type of “passive consumer?” And with that, how are we going to leverage these passive consumers?

What makes it even worse is that users on Pinterest will find value and follow boards from a brand they wouldn’t normally follow on Facebook. This is a catch 22. The brand is exposed to a new demographic, but they aren’t able to cross reference their pins and boards with their interests and persona on other (private) profiles that they might have gained by asking them to opt in via applications or promotional materials. The profile has loose ends.

I pin a lot of healthy looking recipes. Half the time I don’t even click through to what the actual blog post is. It looks delicious. I share it. I probably won’t cook it, and if I do, I most likely won’t share how delicious it was on Pinterest- I would share it on Facebook, Twitter, my blog, etc.

I’m potentially misleading marketers into thinking 1) I fit a new profile of someone who is very conscientious of what they eat and 2) I’m interested in seeing more of the same from them. So where does this leave me as a consumer? Am I worthy of being marketed to? Can I be trusted? Am I weakly expressing a strong interest of mine, or strongly expressing a weak interest? How are these signals being perceived by brands and marketers?

Which leads us to another problem- because of the disintegration of information both on and off of Pinterest, we can’t currently track a user path from Pinterest to other sites. Meaning, I might click through to that healthy recipe you shared, only to completely expend the remaining time on that website in the chocolate cupcake section. We just don’t know yet.

Moreover, Pinterest is allowing you to act as a middle man unless you’re the creator. When you’re sharing recycled information from around the web, you are helping your brand and visibility but you’re also connecting others to a whole network of sites outside of Pinterest that they can easy go directly to and start pinning from themselves.

My fear is that we’re starting to rely too heavily on what users are sharing or engaging with on social networks, without remembering that people have a tendency to sculpt their online personas. Are pinners really true to what they’re pinning? Will the information you gather from them be something useful in the long run?

More importantly, will we be able to cut through the noise and extract the kind of information we need from them to make an informed marketing decision? What happens when we get to the point where we truly can’t trust how our potential consumers are portraying their interests?

When are we going to figure out how much noise and social information is creating a situation of diminishing and misinformed returns?

Just some random food for thought…

As some of you may have seen on our latest announcement on the BlueGlass blog, our company has totally gone through a complete reorganization and restructuring in order to move in the direction we need to and adapt ourselves to perform the very best we can.

I won’t go into the details here (since you can read the announcement) but with the changes, we’re all moving around and getting hyper focused. I, too, will be moving around a bit in the restructuring so that I can really get down and help us move forward in high gear. By focusing myself into my role I can really keep the area that I’m working in strong and propel it forward.

A restructuring is always difficult to get used to (and tough when you have to part with some awesomely amazing people), but moving out of my old role and into my new one will be exciting and in line with how we’re reorganizing for success. :)

Stay tuned!

This is a lame title- completely aware.

I was noticing last night (as I said on Twitter) that I was literally getting the play by play on everything that happened during the Grammys. Who was winning, who was losing, who was performing, who sucked, who came in an egg (jesus) and I’m pretty sure that it took all possible excitement away that I could have derived from watching the Grammys.

Note: Before you tell me to get offline then, realize that I was working and needed to be online. There really was no way to avoid seeing anything.

Remember when we were younger? And we didn’t have a social network to tell us the happenings on award shows, movies, TV series and sports events? When we would get SO EXCITED to see these, that we would actually plan the night around it? (Well, don’t know about you, but I did. My mom loved the Grammys.)

Now it seems like there isn’t even really a point to watching these things. Even if I wanted to hold off and watch it because I was busy, I can’t. Or at least, my fun is foiled because everyone and their mother has inadvertently told me what happened already.

This is just a little bit of what I found out without even turning on the TV:

• I knew Lady Gaga arrived in an egg (and had a ball reading all the comments about it) and on this same note, I heard everyone possible talking about the new single released the other day (which wasn’t that great). I remember a time when we got off our asses early in the morning, lined up at Coconuts for the release of a new CD… no leaked songs… no antics…. nobody knew what to expect… we just waited because we were fans. It wasn’t as easy as just “clicking a button” and the anticipation and excitement was so much higher.
• I knew Justin Bieber didn’t win the award he wanted to (and was upset), but he did perform with Usher.
• Eminem dropped the F bomb and it didn’t get censored when performing with Dr. Dre (YEAH!! Love this)
• Rihanna had on a flaming red dress.

And more. So will I watch the Grammys when it airs again? Probably, but really only for the performances since there’s no point in wondering who won at all.

So now, of course social media makes it more fun for those who are watching. You could follow the #Grammys hashtag and see what others are saying throughout the show and even follow those (like little Bieber) who were tweeting before and after the show.

With the Super Bowl, I was online monitoring a few hashtags to hear what was going on around the commercials and it made it exponentially better. It was exciting.

So before you tell me I’m lame, realize that I understand what social media brings to the table, and I’m super glad that we have it to converse with others during these shows. But ALSO realize how effing annoying it is for those who haven’t yet watched something.

HELLO!

I’m writing this from a beautiful beach cottage in LongBoat Key- it’s really relaxing and there are HAMMOCKS.

ANYWAY! I wanted to drop in and say that I’m going to be a featured guest on the Twitter #SocialChat this Monday (Valentine’s Day!) at 9 PM. I’ll be talking about the integration between traditional and social media.

Gonna join me? Follow the hashtag #SocialChat and come chat with me.

I recently got invited to try out Namesake, and I must say… it’s pretty awesome.

Namesake is place for professionals (entrepreneurs, to designers, to scientists) to gather together and create conversation. It’s different from LinkedIn for a few reasons.

For one, the interface is just amazing. It’s very inviting and well laid out. They definitely kept the clutter to a minimum, which is something I hated about LinekdIn and part of the reason why I don’t use it.

The user info is simpler- it asks for your position, what you’re working on, what you’ve been doing, and has them laid out on separate tabs so that you don’t have to scroll down… and down…and further to view everything. Very clean and user intuitive.

They have endorsements, like LinkedIn as well, but you can endorse for a field (IE: social media) as opposed to for a particular present or past job. This community is more reliant on your skills and capabilities rather than solely what your job is. I like it- if you wear many hats, this community will be great for you.

Some other components of Namesake?

• Private messages
• Auto-refresh streaming conversations
• Ability to follow others according to your “expert” skills- and a scroll over box to see the amount of other “experts” in Namesake

• Ability to upload videos to your profile
• Ability to tag other people and invite them into conversations (they get an email notification)
• Opportunities in each expertise

and tons of other features that you’ll just have to play in Namesake to find out :)

I feel like this community is more centered around those that are innovative professionals encouraging progress rather than the blase feeling I get when I open LinkedIn.

As I dive deeper into Namesake and participate more in the conversations, I’ll be able to update here and give my take. For now, I absolutely rank it high for communities that have captured my interest.

I’ve been participating in some great conversations on the entrepreneurial side about investors, work habits, etc and it makes me feel good to get my head back into entrepreneurial thought. Also, it’s cured my writer’s block.

And for this, I thank thee, Namesake.

If you’d like to follow me on Namesake, you can find me here.

I’m on Lifehacker currently (which, by the way, I’m completely lost in. There are SO many things in the Mac OSX section that I’m downloading right now. Wunderlist being one of them) and I wanted to point out their little happy, unobstrusive opt-in box that allows you to both follow Lifehacker on Facebook, AND get your email updates if you feel so inclined.

Nice, Lifehacker. Me likey lots.

I always notice trends that are going on in Facebook but I don’t necessarily participate. So when I noticed a lot of my friends changing their profile pictures to cartoon characters, I wondered what was up.

Then I saw this in my feed:

I always find it fun to see my friends participating in movements like this, mainly because not too many of my hometown friends are into social media. Or they think it’s just for updating your status and that’s it. They really don’t understand that there’s a lot of information and power that can come with working within a social network, when done for purposeful reasons.

So when they participate in these things, I know that social media has achieved all that it’s been trying to- spreading messages and moving people to participate and share things that they might otherwise not.

This campaign (Campaign To End Violence Against Children – Childhood Cartoon Faces), evidently put together by an unnamed volunteer, encourages users to change their profile pictures to cartoons but also take it one step further- donate to a children’s charity or organization of your choice. It has a great message and idea behind it, but I wonder how effective it really is.

I think they may have diluted the effectiveness by allowing users to do something simple FIRST, ie: changing their Facebook profile pictures, and then having them go one step further into donating.

I think the status message should state something about going further to donate, or mentioning the actual campaign name- since the status message seems to be what’s spreading.

Thoughts?

While working in Internet Marketing, you not only meet a wide range of… ummm… interesting people…. but you also become extremely hyper alert to any changes or trends that you see. These changes can happen before you predict them, so you have to be nimble and be able to go with the flow. Being able to adapt your technique on the fly is essential.

I’ve been noticing lately one thing: Blog posts that share other user’s content is becoming harder and harder to come by.

The availability of applications on our phones that allow us to not only keep up with a website’s content in short form and whenever we want, but also let the world know what we’re doing in 140 character or a status message, is contributing to a condition called, “I have a short attention span WHATAREYOUTRYINGTOSAY!”.

It’s like carpel tunnel. If you restrict your tendons long enough by using the wrong hand positions, you’re going to shorten them until you need surgery to lengthen them out.

So to translate this to normal people language… when working with people, I’ve noticed that they are more likely to put up a social mention rather than take the time to write a short blog post because in their immediate routine, they’re using to sharing on THEIR terms, not on others. They share how they want to, when they want to. You have to get this.

I’m also noticing that content is shared faster and reaches farther when someone uses Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites to share content. So regardless, I think mentions are more useful in a way. I won’t dare say they can completely replace mentions within blog posts, but it sure spreads like wildfire when shared the right way, from the right influencers.

I’m noticing that while many bloggers are willing to help share great content, they’re extremely likely to throw it up on their Facebook or share it on Twitter.

I, myself, know that I’m much more likely to retweet something I see. One simple click of a button.

Even Tumblr, which is rising in popularity and increasing its users exponentially each month, has apps where you can quickly hop on and upload a picture, share a link or reblog someone else. Everything is being made to allow users to instantly share.

How is this going to affect us?

Well when reaching out to blogs or even working with others, keep it short and sweet. Send the essential details and even close with something that can be shared as it is.

You have to put yourself in their shoes. Think like them.

1. Am I directly benefiting from sharing this?
2. Is this something my general audience will care about seeing?
3. Am I going to have to sift through a bunch of crap in this email to find what I need to share?
4. Can I go directly to the site and hit the “retweet” or “like” button?
5. …do I REALLY feel like sharing this?

That’s most likely what’s going to be going through their minds, and it’s your job to make it as simple as possible for them to help you.

If you’re working with a client in the long run that entails a decent amount of outreach, I would make sure that any of their content is instantly shareable- enable them with social sharing buttons on their sites. If you don’t see any, suggest it and help them identify the main social networks that share their content.

After all, you don’t need 80 billion share buttons, you need to identify exactly what channels are best to integrate. Forget all the others. Users are way more likely to share your content when you utilize a few buttons instead of tons of unnecessary ones.

I’m also noticing that social media is fusing more with outreach. Tracking social mentions and metrics is becoming more and more important as the landscape is changing- don’t count directly on having blog owners work with you. With the abundance of internet marketers out there, blogs are often becoming more and more reluctant to share what you’re contacting them about unless it’s HIGHLY correlated with their readers. Or, unless you feel like paying a pretty penny.

This technique is going to become more and more useful with the Bing Social integration… but I don’t want to share my thoughts on that. Top secret. Project  Social-Search.

On that note, I’m going to the apple store. My aluminum Macbook has decided to be an a-hole and expand its battery. I’m really hoping that Apple decides to replace it, seeing as this is probably my 8 billionth product from them. Hear that apple?! My Macbook is being bad. Help.

Saw info on the new Twitter that’s rolling out. I must say… I’m quite interested in seeing what this is like hands on.

I love all kinds of causes that use new media. There’s something about organizations that understand how to truly leverage social potential with the community that fascinates me.

One campaign in particular has caught my attention- Oxfam American Hunger Banquet. Now, I’ll admit it. I love helping out with organizations, but when we’re all so busy, often times it’s easy to forget or say you’ll do it later. Yes, I’m guilty of this. But one of the great things about this Oxfam organization is that they’re completely mobilizing participants and providing them with EVERYTHING that they need to make this successful.

A centralized social hub.

Toolkits.

Step by step event plans.

A script to follow.

Online calendars to find banquets near you.

Notifications.

EVERYTHING.

They don’t just give you information and throw you out there to fundraise and send in money to “donate to the poor for food.” No. They educate you- they teach you what we’re doing wrong, and give you every opportunity in the world to help.

Pretty much, you have no excuse to ignore this. World hunger is a serious problem- and it’s not because there’s a lack of resources. We have plenty- don’t be fooled. The problem is that we’re not allocating our resources efficiently… but we’re all guilty of that too, aren’t we?

The power of people when they’re banded and united for one cause is pretty amazing- people are competitive by nature, and leveraging that competitiveness and sense of unity at the same time makes for a moving and powerful campaign.

One more awesome thing (which I can’t show you on here because it’s written in Javascript- the embedded video is just the regular version) is that the video on the Oxfam homepage allows you to sign up and participate from right within the video. Perfect. Everything is literally right at your finger tips.

So what are you eating for Thanksgiving? How much food are you wasting? I suggest you look into hosting a hunger banquet. You’ll not only feel good about yourself, but you’re also making a difference- and every person counts.

I am done on my soap box now. Good day.